Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1887-07-28
.youNG AMERICA.

The American man, the Drawer im-
AGNES, only develops himself and
spreads himself and grows ''for all he
IS worth" in the Great West. He is
more free and timber there, and un-
folds those generous peculiaritles and
largenesses of humanity which never
blossomed before. e"environment'
has much to do with it. The great
spaces over which he roams contribute
to the enlargement of his mental
horizon. There have been races be-
fore who roamed the illimitable desert,
but they travelled on foot or on camel
back, and were limited in their range.
There was nothing continental about
them, as there is about our railway
desert travellers, who swing along
through thousands of miles of sand and
sage-bush with growing contempt for
time and space. But expansive and
great as these people have become
under the new conditions, the Drawer
has fancy that the development OF
the race has only just begun, and
that the future will show us in perfec-
ton a kind of man new to the world.
Out somewhere on the Santa Fe route,
where the desert of one day was like
the desert of the day before, and the
Pullman car rolls and swings over the
wide waste beneath the blue sky day
after day, under its black flag of smoke.
in the early gray of morning, when
the men were waiting their turns at
the ablution bowls, slip of a boy,
perhaps aged seven, stood balancing
himself on his little legs, clad in knick-
erbockers, bitling his time, with all the
nonchalance of an old eampaigner.
How did you sleep, cap?" asked
wcll-meaning elderly gentleman.
well, thank you. was the dignilied
| response; ''as Arrays do ON sleeping
| car" Always does? Great horrors!
Hardly out of his neutrality-suspicious.,
| and yet he always sleeps well in a
sleeper! Was he born on wheels? Was
| he Graded in Pullman? He has always
been in motion, probably; he started
| at thirty miles an hour. no doubt, this
marvellous boy of our new era. He
was not born in the house at rest, but
the locomotive snatched him along
with IA shrek and q roar before his
eyes were fairly open, and he was
rocked in "section," aud his first SEN
4
| rapidly over vast arid spaces, through
cattle ranges, and along canons. The
effort of quick and easy locomotion on
| character may have been noted before,
but it seems that here is the production
| of new sort of man, the direct pro-
duct of our railway era. 1t is not
simply that this boy is mature, but he
must be different and nobler sort of
boy than one born, say, at home or on
a canal-boat; for whether he was born
on the rail or not, he belongs to the
railway system of civilization. Be-
| fore he gets into trousers he is old in
| experience, and he has discounted
many of the novelties that usually
break gradually on the pilgrim in this
world. He belongs to the new expan-
sive race that must live in motion,
whose proper home is the Pullman
| (Which will probably be improved in
| time into a dustless, sweet-smelling,
well aired bedroom), and whose
sdomestic life will be on the wing so to
speak. The Interstate Commerce Bill
will pass him along without friction
from end to end of the Union, and per-
haps uniform divorce law will enable
| him to change his marital relations at
any place where he happens to dine.
| This promising lad is only faint in.
| timation of what we are all coming to
when we acquire the freedom of the
| continent, and come into that expan-
siveness of feeling and language which
characterizes the Great West. 1t is q
burst of Joyous exuberance that comes
| from the sense of an illimitable horizon.
1t shows itself in the tender words of n
| local newspaper at Bowie, Arizona, on
the death of a beloved citizen:
death loves a shining mark, and
she hit dandy when she turned loose
on jim" And also in the closing
words of New Mexico obituary, which
the Kansas Magazine quotes: 'tHer
tired spirit was released from the pain
racking-body and scared aloft to eternal
| glory at 4.30 Denver time" We die,
as it were, in motion, as we sleep, and
there is nowhere any boundary to our
expansion. Perhaps we shall never
again know any rest as we now under
stand the term-rest being only change
of motion-and we shall not be able to
| sleep except on the cars, and whether
we die by Denver time or by the Goth
meridian, we shall only change our
time. Blessed be this slip of boy who
is man before he is an infant, and
teaches us what rapid transit can
do for our race! The only thing that
can possibly hinder us in our pro-
gress will be second childhood; we have
abolished first. Charles Dudley Var
7er, in Harper's Magazine.